


in love and war.

by bluemccns



Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: Chrobin - Freeform, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-15
Updated: 2018-03-15
Packaged: 2019-03-31 19:49:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13982100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluemccns/pseuds/bluemccns
Summary: you cannot afford to lose yourself to sentimentality.





	in love and war.

**Author's Note:**

> this is a collab/thread i did with a friend of mine and edited into something that flows a little easier. still, there are slight pov shifts.

If one were to ask Chrom who he least expected to fall in battle, his answer would be easy: Frederick.  
  
He's a one-man army all on his own, and while it is quite impressive (and a bit terrifying), Chrom had come to find a second answer to the query, one not as obvious—not as easy to see.  
  
She was a force of nature, all on her own. With lips pressed into a grim line, sword in one hand and tome in the other, she withstood every attack with strength that was very different from that of Chrom's retainer. He never saw her fall, not once. He never believed he would.  
  
He should have known better than to tempt fate as he did.  
  
He didn't see it. She had placed him far from her on the battlefield, paired with their son. Morgan was good at ranged combat, while Chrom was more suited to close-quarters: a good pair, Robin insisted, and he believed her, even if having her so far from him was terrifying.

She fought alongside Inigo. He forced himself to trust that the young man could keep his wife safe.  
  
_Gods, please._  
  
A cry from the man ( not even more than a boy, really ) awakened his deepest nightmares. Falchion at the ready, he spun fast enough to see one of Virion's arrows impale a soldier as Inigo was stooping to catch Robin as she fell, white-platinum hair fanning around her.  
  
He caught sight of red staining pale strands, and he was running, Falchion falling from a gloved hand and a scream tearing itself from his chest.  
  
“ _ROBIN!”_

_Stupid, stupid, stupid_. The single thought repeated like a mantra in the tactician's head. It was all she could manage to think for a moment or two, what with most of her focus on the sudden pain piercing her chest. Her knees buckled, and a pair of arms caught her: Inigo. The panic on his face prompted her to steal a glance downward at blood soaked tips of pigtails and the protruding end of an arrow. Strong arms were replaced with grass once she had been relocated from the direct line of fire, and then arms were back under her, hoisting her to rest her back against a tree.   
  
Her fingers curled around blades of grass, ripping some free from the ground as she audibly gasped at the agony searing every nerve when she tried to breathe. The pain was dizzying, but through the onslaught of disorientation, she could make out the unmistakable sound of Chrom's voice.   
  
_Stupid, stupid, stupid_ , she thought to herself again. She had been careless. A tactician of her caliber ought to be able to avoid things like this. It was her fault for being ignorant, and now everything was going to fall apart. Chrom was vital to their success, but Robin hadn't had the strength necessary to force the sentimental fool back out onto the battlefield where he was so desperately needed. That didn't mean she wouldn't try.   
  
"What do you think you're doing? Get back out there!" She coughed, blood dripping from the corner of pallid lips. "They need you!"

She was right, and he knew it. but he couldn't allow himself to just _leave_ her there.  
  
“ _No!_ ” he cut her off sharply, gathering her in his arms, one hand supporting the back of her head so their eyes met directly. “Damn you, Robin, I'm not leaving you here. Not you. Not now.” He cried for a medic, offered a prayer to whatever god was listening. He could hear the shouts for Lissa over the sounds of battle and the screams of dying men.  
  
One hand fought to grab Robin's, gripping it tightly, so tight that he might have feared it would be painful, if it were any other circumstance.  
  
“I'm not—I'm _not_ leaving you.” He forced the words out, hand gripping hers tight as he clung to her, as if that alone could fight off the hand of death that he knew—as clearly as he'd known with Emmeryn—was coming. “Open your eyes, Robin. Open your eyes! I'm not— I'm not letting you go, not now! ”  
  
Fate was cruel, and while he'd defied it for so long, it was impossible to defy such fate as this. He could hear Lucina working to rally the troops, to form a barrier between Robin, Chrom, and the enemy, while their allies cut a path to get Lissa to them.  
  
He prayed that she wouldn't be too late.  
  
“I'm not leaving you. I _can’t_.”

"Listen to me," she rasped as firmly as she could manage, "you're an idiot. I love you, but you're an idiot."   
  
She willed herself not to cry, for she knew if she did, any attempts to convince him to let go would be in vain.  
  
"You—you're the exalt now. You have to be there for your people. This is war. You and I both know that. When someone falls, you step over the bodies and keep going until you can't fight anymore. You don't waste precious time _weeping_ over them."   
  
He was becoming blurry in her vision, and she wasn't sure if it was from impending tears or blood loss. It was most likely both.   
  
"Chrom, our _children_ are out there. You must go. You can't—" she paused, choking on the lump in her throat along with the coppery taste that washed over her tongue, "you can't stay with me."

 

A ragged sob tore at Chrom's throat, tears rolling down his cheeks as Robin spoke. The words struck him to the core, and — gods help him — they were _true_. He could hear Lucina and Morgan in the fray, his daughter's shouts of forced bravery and his son's cries of fear and rage; his _children_ , fighting a war that they should not have to.  
  
Hadn't he told Lucina that she deserved more!? More than a father's legacy and a heavy blade, a war-torn world, but Robin's words tore at him like knives, opening bloody gashes in his soul.  
  
“Damnation—” he choked out, pulling robin against his chest. With his body curled around her, he let tears fall all the more.  
  
And then he heard it: a singular phrase, spoken in a low, stern rumble over the cacophony of war.  
  
‘”Milord, you must leave her.”  
  
He yelped as gauntleted hands tore him from his wife, pulling him away, and he watched her fall, watched her be taken away by one of the archers, pale hair falling over a crimson-stained chest, hands white and limp at her sides. She was dying as they took her from them. His soul screamed and his heart cried for her, even as he was torn away. He needed to stay with her. She couldn't die, she couldn't, he needed her too much. They all knew who really led the army, and it wasn't him, it never was him, and he wondered why they couldn’t have killed _him_ instead. He shouted and fought, because gods be damned, FATE BE DAMNED, he would NOT LEAVE HER—  
  
Reality struck hard as the blow Frederick delivered to his cheek.  
  
It was an open-palmed slap, one that shocked him to his very core. Tt reminded him of something, but what, he couldn't remember wholly, only flashes — Sumia's face, a gauntleted fist, Emmeryn... Emmeryn was missing.  
  
Frederick stood above him, speaking. He barely heard, but he heard enough of his harsh, clipped words.  
  
“You are the exalt. You cannot afford to lose yourself to sentimentality.”  
  
He wanted to snap back, to snarl. That was his _heart_ that had an arrow protruding from her chest, not some other unknown soldier, but he knew it was useless — Frederick was right. Robin was right.

  
He was the exalt. Morgan, Lucina, Inigo, Owain—all the children, and their families, and his soldiers depended on him. He wasn't Emmeryn, but he needed to try to be.  
  
Falchion was pressed into his hand, and he clung to it like a lifeline as he trudged to where robin was laid out.  
  
“Alright...” he murmured, kneeling and pressing a kiss to her forehead. He stilled, brows furrowing as he struggled against tears again.

For Robin, his outburst hurt a thousand times more than an arrow to the chest ever could have. Her clouded vision and muffled hearing caused impairment, but not to the point where she hadn't known what transpired, and she recalled her unspoken sort of agreement she shared with Frederick. They knew the reality of war and what it took to emerge victorious. Neither of them would allow Chrom to fall victim to his own sentimentality.   
  
Spending the last few moments of life in Chrom’s arms would have been ideal, certainly, but the reassurance that he would continue to fight and protect those dear to her brought a sense of peace. She even found it within herself to smile when she felt a sense of deja-vu.   
  
"This is just like the first time I saw you." The remark was hushed, a mere whisper from the tactician peering up at him from the ground with fluttering eyes. "I suppose there _are_ better places to take a nap."   
  
When soft laughter shook her chest, the accompanying shudder was evident and the cry, pitiful. How she longed to grasp his hand or cup his face, but her hands were limp in the grass beside her. She supposed she'd have to make do with what she had.   
  
"You know, even after writing dozens of battle plans, you were the only thing I've really ever been sure of, and I still am. Go, be extraordinary. I expect nothing less of you."   
  
Salt mingled with the taste of blood as tears cut tracks in the grime on her face.   
  
"If you ever feel alone, remember what you said when you proposed to me. You called me the wind at your back, remember? I thought it was awfully cliché at the time." She drew a shallow breath, giving up the struggle against her heavy eyelids and allowing them to close. “I’ll be the wind. You may not see me, but I’ll always be there.”

 

He couldn’t help the ragged sound that slipped from his lips, through gritted teeth. Gods, but she had to tear him apart, didn’t she?  
  
Her cry had one of his hands gripping hers tightly, pulling it so that he could clasp it to his chest; one final show of affection, perhaps, but he needed it more than he needed air. Listening to her last words, kneeling over her, forcing himself not to shed more tears even though he desperately wanted to. This was more than he could bear.  
  
But he bore it, as she wanted.  
  
“There are better places,” he agreed, giving her a half-hearted smile, faked for her benefit. “but I’ll let you get away with napping here just this once. ”  
  
A call from Frederick roused him from their small moment, and he lifted his head, catching a report of the battlefield and a request for him to rally the troops. He wanted to break. There wasn’t enough time, it seemed, to tell his love what all she’d done for him.  
  
She probably already knew. She always did. She was scary that way.  
  
Blue eyes shifted back to the woman, and he lifted her hand to his lips, pressing a kiss to the odd pattern on the back of it for a lasting moment.  
  
“Goodbye, Robin,” he whispered, before he was pulling away, dropping her hand and standing, weapon held in a clenched grip and a shout rousing in his lungs.

 

He would do this. He would do this for her, for their children, their friends, and their people.  
  
And gods be willing, he’d see her again when his own fate decided his time was done.


End file.
